breathing in upon him from every side? Can you not fancy him musing on the events of the week, lifting up his heart to the God of his fathers, whose bounty and goodness failed not, but were here and now attested in the profuse beauty round him, till faith began to dawn again and the hope crept up that somehow he should yet see a solution of this mystery, some issue that would justify his faith in Jesus and vindicate the goodness and righteousness of God?

And if we can think of this garden in the place where Christ was crucified as thus ministering to the wants and healing the wounds of a bruised and bleeding heart, may we not learn to look around us in our times of desolation and depression for provisions which we may be sure are not far off, provisions made by God to do for us what the garden did for Joseph? May we not learn that God means us to use them; that it is not His will that grief should reign with unbroken sway over any of His children's hearts; that we are not to hug and nurse and foster our gloom, but rouse ourselves to seek the garden plot where flowers still bloom-the smiles of children, the love of faithful friends, the work of love to be done for others, the realm of truth, the field of nature, the bright intercourse of sunny hearts? Oh, there are numberless offers of comfort and diversion, of helpful respite and ravishment that approach us in our seasons of sorrow and disquiet, if only we have the grace to accept them, instead of turning gloomily away, as we often do, saying, "What have I to do with these things just now? I cannot find a garden

II. If this half of the verse recalls the truth of the old proverb," the darkest cloud has a silver lining,” the converse truth is suggested by what follows— in the garden a sepulchre.'

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We do not expect to find tombs in gardens. It is an exceedingly rare thing with us. With the Jews it was not uncommon where the owner was wealthy and the demesne attached to his house large. A cave hewn in the rock as it rose in some steep hillside within the enclosure was frequently the place of sepulture for the family. You might stroll down the alleys of one of these Jewish gardens, where the pomegranate and almond trees mingled their blossoms, the shouts and laughter of the children at play ringing in your ears, and suddenly at a turn of the grove come upon the place of death-" in the garden a sepulchre.'

Again a parable that scarcely needs interpretation. The fairest, brightest life has in it some sepulchral spot where the shadows lie thick, where the air breathes corruption and the ground is wet with tears. The human race (so runs the ancient story) began its history in a garden, and all was very good. But sin came in, and with sin, sorrow and death. Full soon in the first garden there was a sepulchre. The death spot has never faded away out of human history. There is the trace of decay on all things. A shadow of grief follows on the brightest joys. Many of you have seen that fine painting of Edwin Long's, where at the Egyptian feast, according to custom, a mummy is being drawn round on a sledge amid the assembled guests to remind them that they all are mortal. There they sit, the aged and the

young, the bridal pair, the warriors in their armour, the players and musicians, and before them all passes the embalmed corpse of some departed friend. An effective picture, but surely there was little need of such a scenic display to impress upon ancients or moderns the lesson of our mortality. Reminders come of themselves, without any contrivance of ours, or shall we not rather say God sends them. Joseph may have hewed out that sepulchre in his garden, but it is God that hews one out in ours, with a movement of His arm that leaves the armchair vacant, the cradle empty, a portrait in the album that is turned over in silence, a bundle of faded letters locked away in a drawer. We come across them sometimes when we are least anticipating it—as the stranger walking in the garden might upon the rock-hewn tomb-in the midst of our business, our pleasure, our social gaiety. Yes, there it is the sepulchre in our garden. We read in our text that this was a new sepulchre; and that is saddest when the first gap is made in the family circle, when a home that the death angel has never visited first learns the form of funerals, and the little group is divided, some on this side the deep, dark river and one on that.

But it is not only of death that the sepulchre in Joseph's garden speaks to us. It may be taken as the symbol of every great lasting trouble, shame, anxiety that lies amongst our pleasant things. We most of us, like Adam and Eve, begin life in a garden. The love of parents and friends surround us, every sense is a source of pleasure, the joy of exploring the new world into which we come an ever fresh

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delight. The happy days of childhood are passed amidst fruits and flowers manifold. The buoyancy of youth carries all before it; to-morrow's trials are not anticipated; yesterday's tears are soon forgotten; life seems made for enjoyment, and right and good it is that the young soul should enjoy it while it can. But so life's course can not run always. Cares and responsibilities grow apace with the advancing years; and sooner or later comes some heavy blow which leaves a mark never to be effaced; or some fretting source of trouble springs up which, like a cancer, grows and spreads, may admit of palliatives, but can never be thoroughly healed; or perhaps some fatal step is taken that entails irrevocable consequences, or there is some momentary lapse from morality which can never be thought of afterwards without a stinging sense of shame and

remorse.

I know, indeed, that there are many lives which, looked at from the outside, appear to be one unbroken course of prosperity and happiness. Probably if you had looked at Joseph's garden from over the wall you would not have seen the sepulchre. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a manly heart, a sensitive heart, will not desire that prying eyes should scan its deepest experiences, or that strange lips should raise a chorus of lamentation over its woes. It will rather cover the sepulchre up with flowers, so that the stranger passing by may not suspect its existence. But I doubt if there lives the man who has not some spot in his life that answers to the above description, some corner where he fights a fierce battle with the powers of darkness, or some

grave that covers dead hopes, departed joys, defeated aspirations, once alive, now stiff and cold; and I doubt, too, if there be one family that has not its hidden spot of grief and shame. As the proverb says, “There is a skeleton in every home "—in every garden a sepulchre.

It lies not within our choice whether there shall be one or not. Let the garden plot of life be laid out never so carefully, fenced round with diligent precaution to keep out all harassing things, sown with the seed of lovely flowers, planted with desirable fruits, enriched with fountains of delight, yet for all our care, the divinity that shapes our ends will work its own way, and there, perhaps, in the covert we had specially designed for a bower of bliss, behold, a sepulchre! God will not let us have a garden without it. He will not let us find such unsullied satisfaction in terrestrial things that our celestial powers shall droop and die for lack of stimulus to call them into exercise. He would have us raise our eyes above the garden of our own planting to a city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, that has in it no sepulchre. He sends us griefs that we may repair to Him for healing, temptations that we may conquer them and gather strength by conquering, troubles that we may learn to feel for those in trouble, shame, defeat, humiliation, that we may be stript of our self-complacency and walk humbly with our God. He even permits sometimes the sorrow that can never be healed, the burden that can never be cast off, that we may daily and hourly cling to Him and go in the strength of the Lord our God.